XP Investment Platform

Changing how people track their investments.

XPI’s claim that their clients’ investments would yield more than with a bank was usually true. Not because XPI is inherently "better" than a bank, but because XPI exists within an entirely different business category, that being an independent broker versus a traditional bank.

The investment products offered by Brazilian traditional banks are often suboptimal for the final investor and expensive in terms of administration taxes. Generally, all open architecture investment platforms (such as XPI) provide investment products that perform much better than a bank’s and XPI, as the market’s leading independent broker, could deliver on that promise.

It was difficult to validate that claim, though, because investors were unable to properly monitor their accounts and compare earnings against those the same type of investments held in a retail bank. Without a platform to provide that transparency many customers were unconvinced that XPI’s brand promise was being kept.

Objective

Our goal was straightforward: to design a digital platform that would provide XPI’s clients with the visibility they needed to trust that their investments were sound, and profitable. The project would involve an overhaul of XPI’s entire set of digital end-user tools.

The project also required extensive research to fully understand the users’ needs and behaviors. Even though the old platform did not provide them with proper tools for monitoring accounts, users developed work-arounds to keep track of their investments. Our tasks included capturing the ways that people used the existing platform in order to build a new one that met their expectations.

Investors were unable to properly monitor their accounts and compare earnings. Our new solution helps people track their investments in a natural way, making XPI's claim a concrete experience.

"The platform was smoothly implemented and we've received very positive feedback from our clients."

Fernando Vasconcellos
Marketing Director, XP Investimentos

Approach

The INSITUM team approached the challenge in two phases. First, we conducted exploratory research with XPI’s users to understand how they kept track of their current investments: the tools they used, their spreadsheets, if they keep track of the investments at all, etc. Eventually, we identified four user profiles based on users’ level of dependence on advisory versus the depth of their knowledge of investing. These profiles helped us develop insights and create a solution that would assist all user profiles as they performed different tasks.

Secondly, the design phase, which we conducted in a process of cycles, from co-creation to prototyping to testing with real users on three occasions. Each cycle started with solutions co-created by users and internal stakeholders, moving then to a UX design phase and prototype development, and ending with usability tests by the final users. XPI's visual identity was then applied to all interfaces.

Results

The web platform is fully operational and was made available to all XPI’s more than 300,000 customers on July 21st 2017. The launching and onboarding strategy was also designed by INSITUM.

The original platform required navigation among many subpages organized by financial products (bonds, funds, stocks, etc.), with different experiences on each section. For the most part users didn’t compare stock positions over time. Rather, they simply tracked how much money they had invested to-date and how much they had now, and that was the basis of the proposed yield visualization.

The solution is specific to Brazil where, unlike the USA, financial products such as bonds are not actively managed and priced by a neutral financial institution. Prior to the implementation of this new platform users had to manually enter the price and custody evolution of their financial products into a spreadsheet, or have a financial advisor do it for them.

Now, approximately 80% of the functions are accessible directly from the home page, giving the user total control and easy access to all investment products currently owned and the ability to process orders. Users can now see all deposits, withdrawals, actual yield over time and total wealth.

The main navigation uses a drill down experience organized around product status, making navigation easy for each user profile. Users can drill further down into each product, accessing additional information if they need it and, if they choose, on to all technical market information. Now, the casual user is not overwhelmed with information that they neither want or understand, and the more advanced user can access all the data they want.

Additionally, new, smaller features were added, such as a liquidity monitor and an investment auto advisor/risk analysis system that compares the user’s current share of wallet against an ideal share based on the user’s risk suitability.

XPI now has a truly groundbreaking and revolutionary platform for their customers, and we are confident that this people-centered solution will be significant to their goal of making Brazilians better investors.